


A Postscript

by CallieB



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallieB/pseuds/CallieB
Summary: When the touch came, the gentle hand on his shoulder, Will did not startle.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Comments: 18
Kudos: 81





	A Postscript

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, I've never written for this fandom, but I've been rereading HDM after watching the series and it gave me a lot of feels, and then this happened.

_It’s today_ , Will thought, and he knew it to be true in every fibre of himself. He was sitting in his old, faded grey armchair in front of the fireplace, listening to the rain outside with Kirjava curled in his lap. He said to her: “It’s today, dear one.”

She made a soft cat-sound under her breath. She did not speak so often now as she once had, preferring to communicate through purrs and head bumps the way an ordinary cat might; at first, when he’d noticed the decline, he’d been saddened by it, but by now it felt natural. Of course, Kirjava knew even better than he did how soon it was coming. She could see his death, and he was standing very close.

A tightness gripped his heart; Kirjava, feeling it, lifted her head and said: “You know it won’t be long apart.”

“I know,” Will said, but his hand tightened in the soft fur at the back of her neck anyway. He knew it, and he’d thought he would be ready - but after so many years together, parting still felt painful. She nudged his palm with her nose, and licked gently at the place where his two fingers ought to have been.

He’d said his goodbye to Sophie just yesterday, for although he hadn’t known the day for certain he could feel when she left that he wouldn’t see her again. He’d hugged her tightly, and she’d laid her head on his shoulder the way she used to when she was a little girl. She knew, deep down, although she hadn’t wanted to admit it.

When the touch came, the gentle hand on his shoulder, Will did not startle. He turned his head, and his death was there, smiling at him. “Come along, now,” he said. His voice was thin, but not unpleasant. “I’ll show you the way.”

Will stood, struggling to his feet on aching and heavy legs. It seemed that his body was too old and cumbersome to take with him, so he left it lying in the armchair as he followed his death towards the door. Behind him, Kirjava padded quietly across the carpet. They hadn’t said so, of course, but both of them knew they wouldn’t part until they absolutely must.

He did not need the knife to know he was in another world. It had been years, but the sensation was familiar; he was in another place, a different place, and he had travelled there as easily as breathing.

He could feel the call, pulling him towards the town, and the lake. The last time he had been here, he had followed a great crowd of people, all killed by soldiers at once and so all travelling together, but Will had died alone, and so he walked the path alone too. Alone, except for Kirjava, her fur brushing against his ankles.

“She cannot cross the lake,” his death warned, but Will knew this already.

He said: “She’s just seeing me off.” He was surprised to find that his voice sounded different. Stronger, and clearer, the way it had sounded the last time he was here. He asked: “Why am I changed?”

“You changed yourself,” his death replied, as they walked steadily towards the town. Already Will’s own house had faded away. “You’ve been here before.”

Well, he had been here before, and then he’d been young and strong and smooth-skinned. It wasn’t real, the apparition of himself that walked along the path behind his own death, and so he supposed it could look like anything he wanted it to. And right now it was reflecting his memory of this place.

He was fond of the boy he’d once been, so he’d keep this form. Kirjava laughed softly at the thought.

Will remembered the town as overcast and dreary, but it did not seem that way to him now. It was not exactly welcoming, but it felt more homely, as though he was in the exact place he was meant to be. As he approached the houses, he felt something almost like excitement beginning to rise inside him. He was not like so many of the others who came to this place; he knew what was coming, what he must do.

And there was something else, a quiet secret hope, but he kept it hidden in his heart as he followed his death through the town.

They did not need to stop and speak to anyone, because they knew where they were going, but Will still slowed to watch the others as he passed by. For now there _were_ others, a steady trickle of people and many, many deaths, mingling on the streets and talking to one another. Some of them sounded frightened, especially the younger ones. When you were old, you were ready, he thought.

“There’s nothing to fear,” he told a thin, harried-looking young woman. She had a baby in her arms, and she stared at him, but said nothing as he passed her by.

The path from the settlement to the shore seemed quicker than Will remembered, or perhaps it was just that this time he was eager to make the journey. Kirjava walked very close to him, and on impulse he bent to scoop her into his arms. Perhaps this was why the woman had stared: he hadn’t seen anyone else with a dæmon. It made him sad, in a way. Perhaps if everyone knew, they could take their dæmons with them until the last moment as well.

“We’re lucky,” Kirjava murmured in his arms, and he tightened his hold on her.

The water did not look so viscous and slimy as he remembered. It wasn’t _clear_ , exactly, but it appeared fresher, and he wondered if it was like the town, and had only appeared that way because when he saw it last he was not meant to see it. His death led him along the jetty, and then he turned, with that soft smile on his face.

“Goodbye, Will,” he said. Before Will could reply, he _wasn’t_. Will couldn’t have said he’d disappeared - he just ceased to exist, his purpose over now that Will had been brought here.

He thought again of Sophie. His daughter was beautiful, wild-eyed with thick dark hair that reminded him of his mother. She was older now herself, of course, with a family of her own, but when he thought of her he thought of the child she had once been and in truth would always be, to him. She had never been troubled by the stories he told of death, and of other worlds, and dæmons.

Her mother hadn’t liked it. When Will first met her she was full of wonder for the things he told her about his youth, but after they were married he could see her sometimes, looking at him with a tightness around her pretty mouth. She didn’t like him telling Sophie his stories, but it never stopped him.

They’d parted quietly and amicably, and perhaps it was for the best.

“I’ve seen you before.” Will was expecting the voice, but he still started, lost in his thoughts. The boatman looked much as he remembered, old and wizened with yellowed skin and unfathomable eyes. This, at least, hadn’t changed.

He said: “Yes.”

“Ah, you’re the last,” the boatman said. He grinned unexpectedly. “The last of four that I’ll see again. I was surprised the first time, but not after that.”

Will thought about the brave Gallivespians. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder about the boatman’s surprise, seeing them come through his kingdom for the second time, and even if it had he wouldn’t have thought the boatman would remember them, with all the tens of thousands he saw. 

He stepped forward, about to get onto the boat, but the boatman barred his way. He pointed at Kirjava, still nestled in his arms, and the movement was achingly familiar. “You remember, she cannot come this way,” he said in his creaking old voice.

“Yes, I remember,” Will said. It wouldn’t hurt this time, because he was dead, and they couldn’t be separated in the way they had been before. It wouldn’t hurt in the wrong, sickening way it had before, but there was still a pang of something like sorrow.

He buried his face in her fur, and she licked his cheek. “We’ll be together again, soon enough,” she soothed. “We’re not like the others. We know it.”

“I know, but—” Will half-sobbed.

“Will,” Kirjava said. “We’re the last, he said. You heard him.”

Yes, Will had heard, and he knew what it meant, but it didn’t make the pain of saying goodbye much easier. “Goodbye, dear one,” he said. “Until we meet again.”

“We’ll be one,” she said. “We’ll be part of everything that is, and there won’t be any sadness, nor any pain. Goodbye, Will. Goodbye.”

He set her down on the jetty and climbed into the boat. And as the boatman dipped his oar into the dark water, she lifted her little head, and faded into nothingness.

It didn’t burn in his heart the way he remembered. For a few minutes, the only sound was that of the boatman’s paddles, and then Will said: “How long has it been since my friends were here again?”

“Long,” the boatman repeated, sounding almost amused. “How I am I to measure _long_? There is no time here, and you know that better than most.”

Will realised at once that he was right. “Were they at peace?” he asked instead. “You told me… you told me that some people fight, but I wouldn’t have thought Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia would fight. They knew what to expect.”

“No, they didn’t fight,” the boatman agreed. “They were together, those two. He had waited for her back in the town, or some such thing, and they crossed over together. It was very peaceful.”

“That’s good,” Will said. If he’d had a heart, a real heart, it would have been beating hard when he heard that they’d waited for each other. “I’m glad of that.”

He did not ask any more questions. The boatman would have answered them, he knew, but somehow he could not bear to hear it. Instead he just sat there in the boat, letting the boatman row them closer and closer to the island.

When they got to the jetty, the boatman said: “And do you swear you’ll find a way out, the way you did last time?” He was laughing at Will, but only a little.

“No,” Will said, and found he was smiling too. “No, this time I’m here to stay.”

“Goodbye,” the old man said, and then he rowed away, and Will was left to walk towards the ancient wooden door alone.

He recognised the creature sitting on the branch of a tree above the door, and yet he did not recognise her, because she looked so different to the cruel, vicious vulture he remembered. Gracious Wings the harpy had a smooth and beautiful face, with clean dark wings and a smiling mouth. He did not think the changes in her appearance were because he was dead this time. She’d been given a better purpose, and she looked better for it.

“Hello,” he called up to her.

“Welcome,” she said, and then she paused. She clearly recognised him. As he looked up at her, she smiled a little wider. She said: “Oh, it’s you. We’ve been waiting for you.”

There was a large, flat rock by the door, and Will sat on it. “I’ve been waiting to see you again, too,” he said. “I have lots of stories to tell you.”

“I’ll hear them,” she said. “But not yet.”

He glanced up at her in surprise. “Not yet? Isn’t that the price of passage any more?”

She laughed. “Of course it is,” she said. “My task is to guide you and the price of my guidance is your story. You must tell me of the light and the beauty of the world you have come from, and if you don’t then I will not show you the way, because life is precious and it is your duty to live it well.” She sounded as if she was repeating words she’d said many, many times before, and it lifted Will’s heart to hear it. “If you have spent your life turning away from everything that is beautiful and good then you will have to stay in the darkness, because you chose it. But you, you know the way already.”

Her eyes were light, and Will laughed with her. “I don’t know if I remember it, after all this time.”

“Time means nothing to me, but you have waited a long time to come here,” she said. “I will hear your story as I guide you, and you will not tell it because I demand it, but because we are old friends.”

“Alright,” he said, and he got to his feet again.

She flapped her wings. “There is another reason I will wait to hear your story,” she said.

Will looked up at her, and he felt a rush of something a little like exhilaration. “There is?”

“There is another who I love even better than I love you,” Gracious Wings told him. “She is waiting just behind the door. She has been waiting for a while now, but she would not let me guide her alone.”

Will found his voice was raspy with unshed tears. “I hoped she wouldn’t,” he said. “When the boatman said—”

“I will take you to the opening together,” the harpy said, and she touched the door, and it opened.

Will stepped through, and he didn’t feel dead. He didn’t feel thin, or ghostly, or empty. He didn’t even miss Kirjava. He felt warm and alive and filled with a deep love that had never left him, not in all the many, many years they’d been apart, because there was something unchangeable about that love and it could not be buried.

She was there, by the door, just as Gracious Wings had said. And she looked young, like she had shaken off her old body just as Will had.

“Lyra,” he said.

She turned, and she was as beautiful as she had been the day they said goodbye. Oh, the journey to the window, to Kirjava and Pantalaimon, it would be long, and there would be time for every story in the world, for tales of Sophie and Mary Malone and his mother, and Serafina Pekkala and Iorek and every other thing they could possibly think about. There would be time, because she had waited, she had waited.

“Lyra!” he cried, his voice trembling and passionate. “Lyra!”

Her eyes lit up, and she said: “Oh, _Will_ , my _Will_!” and she tumbled into his arms, and everything was just as it should be once more.


End file.
